22 January - Old Tat & New Tat Same Tat

Do they sell it because they think this is what we want? And do some of us buy it because this is all that’s on offer? And we’re abroad and we have to buy something? Has anyone told the hawkers/shopkeepers that times have changed and to get new wares instead of endlessly reproducing wide bottomed payjama style trousers and tops? We’re not all clones of someone who arrived here in ’74 and made a strong impression. Personally I know quite a few tourists/travellers and none of them has a mirrored belt or one of those appalling patchwork bags with or w/o mirrored bits. Ooops I lie. Two men I know have South American carpet bags. I have cringed repeatedly when saw them with them, but also believe in democracy so I had to keep stumm and lift the corners of my mouth up. Or those bed quilts in fabrics that should you wash them would lose 70% of the dye in the first rinse. Or belts with coins? Or those horrid pendants in dark/dirty silver and stones that are not valuable, but everyone tries to tell you it’s the best moonstone this or moonstone that. . Ok revise, my sister has one or two ‘bed’covers /rugs framed as wall hangings but .. she lives in a provincial town and there it probably passes for unique taste. Bit like if you were rebelling against Ikea or some such. Do you see any Indian wearing this stuff? Not even the ones from Rajasthan. Would you buy gypsy shit in the UK? No, so that’s why the locals in Bangalore think we’re mad for coming here. Anyway, the reason why I bought some small shit (but resolutely no Rajasthani tat) is so that every time (and believe me this can be dozens of times a day) someone asks me to ‘look, only look at their wares’, I can flash my bracelet, Shiva sticker, bangle, the ankle jinglies etc. and say ‘I have (already)’. Clearly this does not always work. Some of them think ‘She’s got one, so she must want ten more of the same’. But on average 50% flunk away. Then when I spend the last day in one place I dump it back on a stall holder. I’d like to ask ‘How much you give me for this?’ but I know it would be mean so I just give it away. Including my flip flops to the undesirable who’s busy mending lots of others. I’m not dissing the undesirable. I don’t know of a PC term to call him. And he’s screwed around these parts really. Not even aid gets to him through the curtain of despise heaped on him by his own people. Anyway, he clearly thinks he can score off a tourist. I ask him to mend the handle of a plastic shopper and he wants 20R. ‘Brother, I paid 19R for it w/o haggling so I think you’re mistaken’. I hate it when I get mean in Paradise but it chips away at you.

My Mexican twins came here from Verkala primarily because the Raj gypsies on the coast told them there’d be more like them here and the boys like the sorceress look all kajalled up. Maybe they remind them of their smack-head rocker girlfriends?? Actually think the g/friends are not the smack heads here. Unfortunately what they were not told is that here is where the Rah grannies come to end their selling days. No competition so… not much pickings. Badger would like an Indian wife and then start a hot air balloon business to take us over this incredibly lunar/space oddity landscape. I’d settle for supplying hammocks – so many palm trees and nothing but plastic chairs to sit on. I point out they need educated wives if they want business help/partners so the gypsies are out unless they are fake gypsies with college degrees. But the problem may be that educated Indians, like Bombay girls for example must aspire to a well dressed professional man not someone who models himself on Keith Richards despite not being born until the Stones fifteenth alum release. Not sure they know the Stones here. But then we hit another snag. Bombay girl is unlike to dig Jack Kerouac and Dylan and whatever else are our cultural reference points. And they’d chuck the boys out if they kept a diet of Old Monk rum, the local firewater they’ve taken to drinking.